Education: Smorgasbord of Choices

It's no secret how Deborah Sexton, president and CEO of the Professional Convention Management Assn., feels about education: “Our goal is always to deliver the best possible education – and in multiple formats.”

Take a look at the education schedule for the PCMA Annual Meeting, on tap Jan. 11-14 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. There is so much to choose from – much of which is filled to capacity before the meeting even kicks off – that it immediately is clear the association works hard to meet its members' goals.

“Each year, we are looking to raise the bar and ensure that the education we are delivering is focused on helping our members perform better in their jobs right now,” Sexton said.

The person overseeing much of that educational content, particularly at the annual meeting, is PCMA Senior Director of Education Glen Ramsborg.

As a PCMA member for 25 years – having worked previously at the American Assn. of Nurse Anesthetists as a meeting planner – and a full-time employee at PCMA for the past four years, Ramsborg keenly is aware of the educational needs of the association's members. Even though his primary duties at the meeting include planning the experiential program and preconference workshops, he has a hand at PCMA in just about everything having to do with education.

Ramsborg spoke with TSW Senior Editor Rachel Wimberly about the different levels of learning offered at the annual meeting and the philosophy behind each.

“The topics that are chosen for 'The Master Series' are basically for (higher-level) members, and they are hot topics,” Ramsborg said. “We try and find professional speakers to deliver sessions related to (each) topic.”

He added that the association searches out authors who are experts in the fields PCMA is interested in presenting and then “prep them so they understand who we are. We draw corollaries between the topic and the people who are going to use it.”

At this year's meeting, the topics range from thinking on your feet to taking time to relax:

• “Influencer: The Power to Change Anything,” will be led by Joseph Grenny, a co-author and contributor to eight books, including three New York Times best-sellers. This session will teach people how to create rapid and sustainable change.
• “The Next Generation,” will be led by Peter Sheahan, best-selling author and an expert on millennials, and will focus on “peeling back the stereotype and find(ing) out what Generation Y is really about.”
• “Crazy, Busy, Nuts: Getting off the Conveyor Belt of Life,” will be led by Victoria Labolme, an international performing artist, and will give people the tools to manage the chaos in their lives.
• “The Green Economy: America's New Frontier,” will be led by Jerome Ringo, president of the Apollo Alliance, and he will talk about green technologies and their impact on the economy.

“This series is meant to tweak the interest and provide a different perspective to (a) senior-level meeting planner,” Ramsborg said.

When Ramsborg initially floated the idea of offering experential learning sessions – highly interactive group activities where participants learn things such as wine and food pairings from a sommelier – at the annual meeting, he said only two people on the planning committee sparked to it.

He added that he explained to the rest of the committee: “We are taking content and putting it into context. We take you to an environment. You're not going to sit in a lecture hall, and you're going to be engaged.”

Ramsborg's pitch worked, and the committee signed off on the new type of learning, with the first sessions debuting at the 2005 Annual Meeting in Hawaii.

“The membership didn't catch on right away,” he added, but by the 2007 Annual Meeting in Toronto – where participants stood at the top of the CN Tower in one session called, “Thinking at 38,000 Ft.” – experential learning had caught fire and now is in great demand.

“People get something out of them, and the word got around,” Ramsborg said. To keep the experience intimate, he added, the sessions are limited to 45 people.

At this year's meeting, participants will have the opportunity not only to figure out if a white or a red glass of wine should go with filet mignon, but also to try out a little improvisation and check out the Mardi Gras floats in a team-building exercise.

Before the PCMA Annual Meeting officially kicked off Jan. 11, there was plenty of education happening, such as the “Executive Edge” program, which was led by Professor Deepak Malhotra of Harvard Business School.According to Ramsborg, for the first time, PCMA also hosted the Certified Meeting Professional designation exam, which typically is held at Meeting Professionals Intl.'s summer meeting. “We're very honored and excited about that,” Ramsborg said.